I’m gonna’ cut to the chase here: Hit detection and subsequently bullet magnetism is WAY too large and lenient. The sheer ease of targeting kills competitive play, or any kind of skilled play, dead.
It is the root cause of the vast majority of complaints with the multiplayer at the moment - including the distance-camper problem on big maps and fast kill times in all playlists. In fact, it’s absolutely ludicrous how easy it is to shoot someone because of this issue. A good portion of our concerns should be second to this, because the game is nothing short of a unskilled fragging match and big team camp-fest right now and no map tweaking or individual weapon nerf/buff will change that until this issue is seen to.
It is near-impossible to engage in a good old DMR/BR/AR/etc. fight like previous Halo’s with Halo 4, because it is practically impossible to “miss” your dodging target - and even when you do miss, you’ll likely hit them anyway. Don’t even bother attempting to dodge incoming rounds, as your opponent only barely needs their larger sight reticule to be aiming somewhere near you to obtain a hit.
At this point I probably sound like a butthurt teen, but I assure you this has been tested and proven. Hell, I encourage each and every one of you to try it out for yourselves on your own copies of Halo 4. Go into forge and slap a load of weapons down with a friend or two and test the weapons out at different ranges. Aim just-off your target… then you’ll see for your own eyes the point I’m about to make. I would have screenshot evidence as I’ve run a few hours long test of my own, but the Fileshare system isn’t running yet, so I will upload them ASAP once the system’s green-lighted if the topic issue/problem/bug/shortcoming/poor design choice hasn’t been rectified by then.
The DMR in-scope at short to very long range will not miss a single shot when an opponent has any body part barely on the outer reticle edge and you can fire away guaranteeing a hit on every single shot made.
Now that might just sound a little off, but let me remind you that the sights are actually disproportionately larger when scoped, and bullets should go to the inner reticle nearly every time. Instead, the bullets will hit a person 100% of the time if they’re even relatively near the outer reticule edge (just turned blue from red when aiming slowly away).
The same goes for the BR, Light Rifle and Sniper rifles. To put it blunt, it is intolerable that these weapons will hit and kill someone who is hardly, and I mean hardly, in those outer sights - or with some guns, simply no target actually within them will earn hit markers and shield damage. Ironically, the carbine is the only weapon that does not seem to be overly affected by this problem. While it is still a large issue unscoped, it’s mostly but-not-limited-to precision weapons in-scope; primarily the DMR. Because of this people are encouraged unwittingly to camp over the tops of objects, in-scope and cross-map as it’s naturally a safe and easy way to earn easy kills.
Hell, grab a laser and try it. You only get a hit if your target has a body part in line with the dead-centre of the sights. How is it that a laser, meant for use against vehicles, requires sniper-levels of accuracy, when a DMR dominates with flawless artificial accuracy from most ranges? It appeared to be the only weapon that behaved as you’d expect all the other precision weapons to behave.
Now, unscoped each gun offers different results, but the general result was that the range of some is still unreasonably far. In one test, what was generally agreed to be the optimal BR range had the Assault Rifle killing just a little faster, therefore more successfully, and a simulated repeated fight supported this argument. Once again, try it for yourselves and I’m sure you’ll get similar results.
If 343 makes the inner reticules of precision weapons the guaranteed hit instead of the outer reticules they currently have adopted, the game will still only be as (un)balanced as it is now. It will, however, but a much more competitive-friendly place with a good learning curve instead of the non-existent learning curve it has now.
I suggest that 343 reduce the range at which most guns obtain a red targeting reticule at current overly-long distances, close in their super-kind artificial accuracy to a more reasonable human-dependant accuracy of the inner-reticule of DMR and more centred for the BR and LR, and mildly reduce the bullet damage of the loadout primary guns at their adjusted longest ranges and beyond. I also recommend a reduction in bullet stopping power overall, but mostly across larger distances to give retreating from a bad spawn or distance-camper a possibility. Overall this should encourage players to get a little closer on the bigger maps as they’re subtly shown that pelican to cliff-wall on Ragnarok is not a suitable range to successfully engage someone at. In theory, this should mostly eliminate the “first to shoot, wins” and cross-map fighting; which in turn should be primarily reserved to sniper-play, vehicle attacks and pot-shots. Guns will be less effective at such super ranges they work so well at now, but fine at all other ranges relative to damage today. Remember: They’re precision weapons, not base-camping, cliff-hugging, peek-a-boo BOOM-HEADSHOT weapons. On the flip-side, for Precision Weapons they certainly don’t need much of it to do exceptionally well.
These changes would not only benefit combat on large maps, but matches across all maps and playlists. BR/DMR duels will become just that again with the much higher demand for human controlled accuracy over the artificial aiming assist “easy-mode” accuracy, requiring more skill in multiplayer and nothing more. Its effects on the flow of the game will be minor at best. A single, crucial missed shot or two would be more likely to occur, handing equal-weapon victory’s to the most skilled person rather than the person who squeezed their shot off first.
At the very least, 343, consider it. To anyone else thinking I’m talking nonsense, go see for yourselves. As I’ve pointed out a few times now: it can be seen first hand - or if you want 343 to keep it easy, why?
EDIT: A few people are noting that it’s just a console aim assist or bullet magnetism that Halo’s always had. This is not an aim assist, but a stupidly overcompensating bullet magnetism hit aide. It’s a fully fledged targeting system that requires no work beyond your enemy having so much as a breadth of hair inside the extra-broad targeting radius of most precision guns before it’s landing you a 100% hit every time.
EDIT 2: All evidence clips are in my fileshare GT “Bvenged” under the map Ragnarok. For the entire test clip see the film “Ragnarok”. Note: testing doesn’t work in splitscreen, weapon accuracy behaves differently in local-mode to Xbox Live for some reason.